COVID-19 and the upheaval surrounding it has overshadowed many other aspects of 2020, but has highlighted the importance of stress management and understanding the causes of stress.
While some of these causes recede while we are predominantly working from home (such as direct exposure to bullying and sexual harassment – a recognised issue in some legal workplaces), some remain unaffected or are even exacerbated. Working from home long-term also poses new challenges (I cover some of these in free-to-view Practical Law videos on self-leadership and legal team leadership during a pandemic).
Earlier in 2020, I worked with Practical Law to conduct a survey investigating the causes of stress in UK in-house lawyers. I wanted to test two hypotheses that I had formulated over the course of 15 years spent working with lawyers, namely that:
- In-house law is a more stressful environment than law practised by lawyers in law firms (what I call “business law”), contrary to what is often believed.
- There is a gender angle to the question of stress which has been ignored to-date, in that female lawyers are typically under more stress than their male counterparts, wherever they practise.
Comparing the results of this survey with those from previous surveys that focused on Swedish lawyers has been illuminating and challenges those hypotheses’ validity in the UK to some extent.
